Amazons Kindle Announcement

Amazon today announced a flurry of new products but lets just take it from the top in terms of price.

First up: Kindle, a new revision of the current standard Kindle. Now it costs $79/£89/€109 and it’s 75pc lighter. It keeps the buttons and it holds 1,400 Books (2GB memory) and has Wi-Fi. Battery lasts 1 month to read books and if you leave Wi-Fi on it should last about 3 weeks.

The next model up is the Kindle Touch. It’s a new Kindle model in that it has no buttons. What’s nice is that if your a left hander you can adjust it so its more comfortable. The touch model is Still E-Ink so no stress on Eyes. The battery life on this model lasts 2 Months with connectivity off. The Touch model also comes with a 3G model and with the 3G model you have free data to over 100 countries with no contract. With Wi-Fi on it will last 3 Weeks. The pricing of the Touch Wi-Fi is $99 and €72. The 3G model costs $149 and €109. This is only available off of Amazon.com however

The Big and latest model is the Kindle Fire. It first begins earlier last week when Amazon announced a new partnership with Fox. The announcement gives streaming over 100,000 of Movies and TV Shows including 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more. But today they announced the Kindle Fire. This is a full on tablet that extends outside of books. It includes Movie, TV Shows, Music, Apps, Books and Games. It has a full 7 Inch color IPS screen with a resolution of 1024×600. It does have a dual core processor. Battery life is 8 hours of Reading and 7.5 Hours of watching Video content and thats with Wi-Fi off. With Wi-Fi on the battery life varies. The price of this is $199 and it is only going to be available in the States. If it becomes international and can be purchased off of Amazon.com it is around €149. You will not need to be a Amazon Prime member to avail of this pricing. The web browsing on this device is new and it’s called the Amazon Silk Browser. What this means is not only can it web browse, but it’s more efficient as it works off Amazons EC2 servers to deliver faster browsing. No word on Flash content and the Kindle is running just a skin on top of Android and it will only work with Amazons App store etc. It also has stereo speakers. (ehehem iPad 2) And you can bookmark videos now too so you can resume where you left off if it’s like a directors cut of the Titanic and you need to get back to life half way during it.

Other notes include that Pre-Orders start today and all new models will ship on November 15th. The current Kindle line up (Now known as the old clunky models) are still up for sale. All models don’t require a computer to setup.

My thoughts on all of this: When will Apple announce that €250 iPad mini because this year with the falling profits and loss of disposable income. Unless the cool kids really want Apple iPads, this will be a great competitor and that $79 Kindle, lets talk stalking stuffers everyone! Also lets not forget that next Tuesday Apple is holding an event at 10 AM Pacific talking about the next iPhone. More on that next Tuesday!. Mean while I’m going to dream about a Kindle fire when it finally reaches Irish shores!